1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements in testing computer circuit boards and testing various computer peripheral equipment such as tape drives, disk drives, floppy drives, optical drives, etc. In particular, the present invention relates to apparatus which eliminate the necessity of plugging and unplugging floating cables from the circuit board and provide an efficient and effective system for coupling and uncoupling test printed circuit boards and associated equipment which are being tested.
2. Description of the Prior Art
When testing and preparing printed circuit boards and also computer peripheral equipment, it is necessary to plug the disk drive and other equipment being tested into a test system. The conventional apparatus by which the printed circuit board from the test system is plugged into interfacing printed circuit boards is through flexible cables which have accommodating mating female plugs at both ends which are fit into accommodating male fingers on the printed circuit boards. While the flexible cable provides a flexible connector assembly to accommodate various locations of pins on printed circuit boards and male prongs on disk drives, it also presents several problems. First, when testing a lot of disk drives, the constant motion of plugging and unplugging the flexible cable into one drive after another creates a substantial possibility of damaging the cables or the mating prongs or pins on the disk drives. In addition, a second problem is the likelihood that the cable will be plugged in backwards, causing faulty readings and possible power shortages. Plugging in the cable backwards may also damage the disk drive or the computer printed circuit board.
In addition, most printed test circuit boards are conventionally held in a fixed or screwed down manner on a surface. In order to replace the test boards, it is necessary to unscrew the boards and then rescrew new test boards. This is time consuming process.
Therefore, there is a significant need for a mounting means by which the test printed circuit boards can be easily retained on the mounting board and removed and replaced with other boards and also a means for rapidly and efficiently plugging and unplugging the test printed circuit board into another printed circuit board to be tested, and to interface boards which are plugged into computer equipment to be tested.